Hi all,

SWIM has just checked his freeze-precip after 10 hours in the freezer and no crystals have formed. This is alarming for a few reasons.

1. The bark is from an Acacia Acuminata and was successfully extracted from (the first half of the bark batch)using an A/B tek. With this A/B tek, crystals formed easily overnight during the freeze precip, even after the 3rd and 4th shellite pulls.

2. This is the first naptha pull and should yield be the highest.

3. STB yields supposedly more than A/B (as some seem to claim)

SWIM followed NB's tek more or less, experimenting in two jars with varying combinations of proportion. In one jar was placed 200gm's of NaOH in 1L of distilled water with 200gm's of powderised acacia bark. In another jar was placed 165gm's of NaOH in 1050ml of water with 175 gm's of acacia bark. These two mixtures were left to sit for 15-18 hours before the shellite was added. After the shellite was added they were left sit for a further 12 hours and were shaken/agitated 4-5 times during that 12 hour period.

SWIM added roughly 200ml of shellite per jar and pulled roughly half of that, 100ml of shellite per jar, placing both solvent pulls into one precip-jar giving a total amount of solvent for freeze precipitation as 150ml-200ml in one jar.

What struck SWIM initially about the shellite/DMT soup was its yellowness. Initially it seemed pungently yellow, but has since changed to a more orange hue. Like Gatorade almost.

It's a bit of a mystery, especially considering the fact that the bark has been proven active by previous extractions. Are there any common problems with acacia bark and STB? Also, SWIM felt a little wrong putting the bark straight into such an extremely basic solution. With the A/B tek followed previously, much emphasis was put on put on avoiding pH spikes by releasing the NaOH/Water mixture into the acidic wash mixture with great care and slow speed.

Any help would be appreciated as SWIM is a lazy soul and would rather not do the acid boils.

Thanks

i would try to evaporate some of the shellite then try to freeze/precip again. yellow is a good color, the orange.. maybe you want to perform a sodium carbonate wash on that. also 10 hours is not that long to be in the freezer, i usually leave mine in for almost 2 days. good luck

Acacia has a lot more plant crud that gets pulled than MHRB does, and STB's are more prone to pulling plant crud, so my guess is that this is in your shellite and preventing the freeze precipitation.
I'd evap and do an A/B on the residue.

Thanks for the hand guys. SWIM carried on pulling from the basified jars, and last night evapped and froze half of a shellite pull. SWIM woke up this morning to find that the jar they had put in last night is caked on the bottom with yellowish gunky goo. So Noman, I think you're right about the Acacia/STB extra gunk.

So all in all, there's the first precip jar (the one I posted about) which is filled with highly active/highly oily shellite mixture (which after a day and a half has vaguely precipitated a thin, stringy, gooey sheath)

AND the consequent pulls which will more than likely yield significant amounts of the yellowy paste.

My first question is what is the best way to go about processing the pasty yellowy gunk which I expect to get from my next few pulls. SWIM is a hardcore ciggie smoker and can handle a harsh hit so he's happy to cop some plant oils and has no probs smoking this gunk if it's been set into some enhanced leaf. Is this safe and do-able? If so can you point to the best tek for the job if you know one.

Secondly, how does SWIM go about pulling what could be some very active alkaloids out of his first pull which I posted on originally. MCoyBoy, you said to do a carbonate wash of the shellite solution. Given that SWIM believe's there to be no noxious NaOH particles, is this still worthwhile? Will it separate plant oils as well as stray NaOH?

And Noman you said to do A/B on the residue. I've heard of acid washing and then re-basing a SOLUTION but not a residue. I'm curious about your meaning. Not to forgot what I mentioned earlier about the yellow gunk. That is, SWIM is happy to say, evap half that jar, plonk some damiana/changa in, let it evap fully and set on the damiana. Can you see any problems with this lazy and gung-ho idea?

Big cheers

Same deal basically. I'd add pH3 water to my residue and slowly warm it up, getting as much residue as possible to dissolve, check the pH and take it back to 3, filter, defat a couple of times, and then basify as normal and extract.
If you don't mind plant matter in your yellow gunk, go for it. It'll just smoke harsher. Probably be prone to catching fire too, if there are a lot of oils in it.